Egyptians May Have Saved Israeli Envoy from Assassination Attempt

November 24, 1987

TEL AVIV (Nov. 23)

Egyptian security forces saved the Israeli ambassador in Cairo, Moshe Sasson, from possible assassination by a 15-man hit squad financed and controlled by Libya, according to a report Monday in Maariv by its Arab affairs correspondent Sheffi Gabai.

Gabai wrote that the assassination attempt was disclosed when captured members of the terrorist gang were put on trial Sunday in the military court for state security. But eight of the terrorists apparently managed to escape from Egypt.

Gabai quoted the Egyptian prosecutor as saying that the assassination squad belonged to the Nasserite Organization, which operates openly in Egypt and was responsible for bombing the Egypt-America Bank in May 1986.

It planned a series of politically motivated assassinations of diplomats in Egypt and attacks on foreign institutions. The prosecutor has demanded life sentences at hard labor for the terrorists, Gabai reported.

But he did not link the hit men to another terrorist group, the “Egyptian Nasserite Revolution,” whose members are in custody but not yet put on trial. That group is headed by Amad Halad, son of the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

It is believed responsible for the fatal shooting of an Israeli woman employed by the Israel Embassy in Cairo and the wounding of three other embassy employees in a machine-gun ambush outside the Cairo Trade Fair on March 19. 1986.